Baby's Day Out
by Lucillia
Summary: There were already enough people questioning seven year-old Uchiha Itachi's abilities as a Genin, and he didn't need any more joining in after he'd lost his charge during his first C-Ranked mission. Hopefully, he'd be able to get the kid back before someone realized he was missing. If he didn't, the alternatives didn't even bear considering.
1. Itachi's First C Rank

Itachi ducked his head and pretended not to hear the whispers as he passed through the marketplace on his way to meet his team at the mission assignment desk. He'd graduated the Academy three months before, and had been placed on a team with Yamanaka Santa, and Nara Kara under the older and soon to retire Senju Kazuma who was amongst the last of the Konoha shinobi to bear that family name since the Senju Clan had long since broken apart and married into other families. There were however a small number of Senju living and working in the civilian sector, but that had no bearing on him, his team, and the reason why he was trying to escape the whispers that followed him wherever he went.

The reason for the whispers that surrounded him was because people were questioning him, questioning his ability, and his preparedness for life in Konoha's shinobi ranks. Since it was no-longer a time of war and there was no pressing need for more troops, such an early graduation as his was seen as unnecessary, and unnecessarily cruel to say the least. To make matters worse, rather than believing that he had graduated on his own merits, the villagers had chosen to believe that his father had somehow bribed the Academy officials to push him through early in an attempt to gain prestige for the Uchiha clan which had been steadily falling in popularity since the Kyuubi attack.

The fact that he was roughly the same height as an average Konoha five year-old didn't help things at all. His mother had said that he'd go through a growth spurt soon, but soon wasn't now when people looked at his short stature and shook their heads.

Everywhere he went, the whispers of the villagers followed him, and here was no exception. But, then again, if he didn't hear it from the villagers, he heard it and worse from his teammates who hadn't been happy to be shown up by someone who was five years younger than they, and his sensei who held some sort of grudge against his paternal grandfather that had been carried down to him.

Eventually, after he'd made an effort not to bristle at a particularly cutting remark that had been made by one of the Hyuuga, he'd reached his team in time to learn that they'd scored a C Rank mission. He'd internally cheered along with his teammates who were cheering aloud, since he'd been growing tired of the chores to which his team had been constantly assigned. He stopped mentally cheering when he'd heard the specifics of the mission. It was yet another baby-sitting job, albeit one that had been mislabeled as a C-Rank.

When he heard the name of his team's future charge, he found that it sounded vaguely familiar to him for some strange reason, despite the fact that he was reasonably certain that he didn't know anyone named Uzumaki. When he arrived at a small apartment in a neighborhood that was mostly inhabited by the lower middle-class and the poor that didn't quite make the cut and saw the small yellow-haired toddler that was racing around the room, he realized exactly why this particular job was a C-Rank rather than the standard D, as he had been old enough to understand at least some of what his mother and the pretty red-haired lady had been whispering about back when they used to meet up in the marketplace. His team had been given the honor of watching the son of the late Yondaime, and the pretty red-haired lady who had used to visit his mom sometimes back before the Kyuubi attack.

Neither of the people who had looked at them as if they were saviors who had just pulled them from the battlefield before racing to grab some of their belongings which had been scattered about the small apartment looked anything like the Kushina lady, whom it was probably safe to assume was dead since he hadn't seen her since the Kyuubi attack. Both of them, who looked to be about two years or so older than his teammates, were male, for one, and he was reasonably certain that he'd seen them on gate guard duty recently.

Having had experience with Sasuke, he could tell that the toddler who was racing around the apartment while the previous watch shift ducked out the door and ran off was tired of being cooped up inside the apartment which had a number of cheap toys scattered across just about every available surface. He said as much to his teammates, and suggested that they bring the child to a park where he could run around until he tired himself out in time for his afternoon nap.

That had been his first mistake.

His second had been taking his eyes off of Naruto for the two seconds it took to hand over his share of the payment for the lunch his sensei and Kara were fetching for the team. By the time his eyes had returned to the small sand-pit that little Naruto had been playing in, occupying himself with the task of shoveling sand into a pile, the boy was nowhere in sight.

The panic he'd felt when he'd realized this had caused his Sharingan to activate. Had his Sharingan not activated, he probably wouldn't have seen the small flash of yellow that was the back of Uzumaki Naruto's head as little Naruto slipped into the bushes that separated the park from the residential neighborhood that surrounded it.

"Where's Naruto?" the auburn haired Yamanaka Santa asked, having finally noticed that their charge had gone missing during their moments of inattention.

"He went off to go play in the bushes. I'll go get him." he replied, having already been in the process of getting up in order to do so knowing how much trouble a two year-old could get into in five seconds, as that had been exactly how long it had taken for Sasuke to get into his kunai pouch last week when he'd made the mistake of setting it on the counter when he'd gone into the kitchen to fetch a glass of water.

"Alright, whatever. Just be back in time for lunch." the Yamanaka replied in a bored tone as he almost idly turned his attention back towards the playground where a couple of his younger cousins were playing.

When he reached the bushes, Naruto was nowhere to be found. He frantically searched the bushes and the area surrounding them to no avail. But, in the instant he was about to give up hope, call for reinforcements, and kiss his ninja career goodbye so soon after it had started since he'd never live down losing the Yondaime's son while he was supposed to be watching him, he heard a familiar voice shriek "Kitty!".

_Oh, thank the gods!_ he thought as he rounded the corner and headed into the alley from which the joyous cry had come, preparing to separate Naruto from his newfound feline friend and bring him back to the park, only to find his charge being carried off by a tiger that had somehow escaped from Training Ground 44.

Paling rapidly, he raced after the large feline which had the back of Naruto's diaper in it's mouth.

Something up there obviously hated him.


	2. It's a Zoo Out There

As they left the neighborhood surrounding the play park that he and his team had brought Naruto to, Itachi carefully followed the escaped tiger that currently had Naruto, fearing that if he startled it too badly, he might inadvertently drive it to do something that might hurt or even kill the small toddler who was around Sasuke's age. Eventually, after several tense minutes, the tiger set its burden down in a clearing in one of Konoha's strolling parks which was completely empty, which was rather unusual for this time of day.

As soon as the tiger set Naruto down, it gently trapped the small boy under one of its massive paws and started licking his head as if he were a small cub. Naruto, completely unaware of the danger he was in, giggled every time the tiger ran its tongue over the spiky blond mop that covered the child's head. Itachi, who feared that the tiger might grow tired of its newfound maternal duty and decide that Naruto made a better snack than a cub, wasn't nearly so happy.

Running to the rescue, despite the fact that he'd much rather run away, Itachi charged the tiger which protectively blocked him from Naruto and snarled a warning at him. Unable to back down because Naruto's safety was paramount, he continued to charge, and the tiger met his charge. In a fight between a five-hundred pound tiger and a seven year-old who couldn't have weighed more than sixty-five pounds, it was no contest. In the instant that Itachi knew he was going to die, his Sharingan activated, and he desperately flung the first and strongest sleep Genjutsu that came to mind at the animal. The creature was already unconscious by the time they hit the ground with Itachi trapped beneath one of the animals paws which had been less than half a second from taking his head from his shoulders.

By the time that the bruised and winded boy who was on a adrenaline high that would have had BASE jumpers jealous had gotten himself out from underneath the tiger, Naruto was gone from the immediate area. After a frantic search during which Itachi had come to fear that Naruto had been crushed under a much heavier portion of the tiger, he spotted the boy making his way towards a pond that was surrounded by a flock of wild geese.

Two seconds later, a number of facts clicked into place, an observation was reached, realization dawned, and Itachi's heart nearly stopped once more.

Every Spring and Fall, one of Konoha's most beautiful strolling parks was virtually shut down because it lay in the migratory path of what had to have been the meanest and most vicious geese to ever have graced God's green Earth. Legend had it that the ancestors of these geese had once treed Madara. Naruto, who was far smaller and infinitely less talented than the disgraced former head of the Uchiha clan, waded through the flock as if he hadn't a care in the world. Him however, well...When he'd raced over to retrieve the wayward toddler from the danger he'd unwittingly placed himself in, there had been a warning hiss, and then several dozen pairs of the evilest eyes he'd ever seen turned to focus on him. He had naturally backed off until...

"Ducky!" Young Uzumaki Naruto who could not yet tell a goose from a duck cried before running up to the meanest looking gander of the lot and caught the one-eyed specimen in a headlock, wrapping his arm around the creature's neck and sticking his thumb into his mouth, as if the bird were a stuffed animal.

Fearing impending disaster, since the bird that Naruto had grabbed was larger than he was, and more than capable of causing a great deal of damage with its beak which could tear into delicate flesh or peck out tiny eyes, its wings that could mercilessly batter a tiny toddler body, and the sharp claws that tipped the ends of its webbed toes, he pushed his way through the flock of geese that didn't give him the courtesy of a second warning hiss before they lit into him. He pushed through the pain as the birds viciously tore and clawed at his flesh and battered him with their wings, intent on getting to Naruto who still had the bird in a headlock before something happened.

Finally, after he'd made his way through the flock, he picked Naruto up, turning the gander the toddler had been manhandling loose in the process. Rather than moving off and tending to its ruffled feathers, the gander attacked him, and he was forced into a running retreat as the entire damn flock pursued him, and Naruto screamed in his ear over the loss of the "Ducky". Eventually, after running up what was incidentally the same tree that Uchiha Madara had raced up when he'd fled from a certain flock of geese nearly seventy years before, he had finally escaped the birds that had been madly biting and clawing at him the entire way.

As Itachi opened the field medkit that was nowhere near enough to properly tend to the mess the geese and the tiger had left him in, Naruto squirmed from his grasp and fell from the tree. Miraculously, the child had landed on his bottom. As he prepared to leap from the tree and tend to the wailing toddler, a massive hawk swooped from the sky and scooped the boy up and flew off with him.

"FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!" Itachi yelled as he watched the bird wing its way back into the wild blue yonder.

Rather than heading into the woods to devour its prize as he'd expected it to, the bird turned towards the center of the village and winged its way towards the Administration Complex.

"Incoming, and it's got Naruto!" one of the ninja who worked with Konoha's Messenger Hawk Corps said as he surveyed the sky through a pair of field glasses and caught sight of one of Konoha's largest and strongest messengers.

"It's neat that you trained the birds to catch him when he's on the loose like that boss." another member of the Hawk Corps said as he grabbed Naruto's carry basket.

Chief Hawk Handler and Trainer Kamizuki Takamaru, who had inherited his position from someone who'd inherited his position from someone who'd inherited his position from someone who'd inherited his position from someone who'd inherited his position from Uchiha Madara who had convinced the Shodai Hokage that using hawks was better than using carrier pigeons and used his skills in Falconry and his own birds to found the Messenger Hawk Corps, blushed slightly before saying "They won't be able to do that for much longer."

Five minutes later, Naruto was secure in his carry basket and being delivered to the Hokage. Two minutes after that, a wild-eyed Uchiha kid who'd looked like he'd gone through hell and back before ending up on the wrong side of a Kage Shuriken Jutsu leapt through the window, startling several birds in the process, and screamed "WHERE IS HE?!"

After staring open-mouthed at the latest sucker to draw Naruto babysitting duty for about a minute, Takamaru numbly pointed towards the stairs.

The day probably would have ended there, and poor Uchiha Itachi would have probably been dragged to the hospital at that point, if the Hokage hadn't been sucked into a budget meeting that ran so far over schedule that it wasn't even funny, meaning that Naruto had been delivered to an empty office, and left to his own devices completely unsupervised for several minutes rather than the one or two that he should have been.

In that time, Naruto had figured out how to work the latch to his specially cushioned and properly ventilated carry basket from the inside, popped the lid, and escaped.

By the time the battered and bloody Uchiha Itachi had made it down to the floor on which the Hokage's office was located, increasingly fearing the Hokage's reaction over the fact that he'd lost the child, and his father's, his clan's, and the village's reaction to the fact that he'd failed his first C-Ranked mission, it had been to see one Uzumaki Naruto making his way out of the Hokage's office and down the hall, almost completely unnoticed by the administrative staff who were far too used to his presence to consciously register him.

Hoping that it might salvage his reputation somewhat if he managed to catch him before he made his escape, Itachi raced after the wayward brat.


	3. Running in Darkness and in Light

On the way out of the village's sprawling Administration Complex, Itachi had been there to witness what was supposed to be the proudest moment in a young Uzumaki's life, Naruto's first attempt at making a seal. In a normal situation, there would have been a whole lot of nothing before a proud parent or parents squealed happily and started making a great deal of fuss over the scribbles that would soon either grace the fridge or be framed and placed on the wall depending on the type of parent. After the scribbles were properly dealt with, the story would be spread by the proud parents for several days to several weeks, and the scribbles would be shown off for a period that could last months or years depending on how recognizable they were before everything went back to normal on that front.

Naruto's life had never been normal however.

While Itachi had been busy apologizing to the irate desk ninja whom he'd inadvertently knocked over while he was chasing Naruto in hopes of retrieving him, Naruto had climbed onto a recently vacated desk upon which an open bottle of Sealing ink had been left unattended. During the wild finger-painting session that had followed Naruto's discovery of said ink, the boy ended up slicing his hand on a rather sharp letter opener that had also been left unattended by the previous occupant of said desk who had also left a picture frame and a pair of reading glasses behind when he'd gone on his coffee break.

That probably would have been the end of it, and Itachi probably would have caught Naruto then and there and saved himself a great deal of grief if a drop of blood hadn't fallen onto Naruto's "artwork" while the screaming child had been flailing his rapidly healing hand about. As it was, the instant the drop of blood hit the mess on the desk that had maybe two lines in common with a storage seal and therefore would have been frame on the wall material had he been in Uzushiogakure, there was a bright blue flash, and all light was sucked out of the room for an entire thirty seconds.

Under such circumstances, it was entirely understandable that Itachi had lost track of Naruto. It wasn't as if everyone started flailing about and panicking like the toddler had done before he found and went out the door at twenty-three seconds and counting, but considering the end result, they may as well have done so as far as Itachi's ability to keep track of a certain toddler was concerned. Being trained ninjas, they had all frozen in place and waited for further developments in order to form an effective plan of action the instant the darkness had fallen, and when there were no explosions or jutsu immediately following the room's plunge into darkness and nothing continued to happen aside from a panicked Naruto flailing around the room after ten seconds, everyone but Itachi who didn't have the layout of the office memorized and wasn't able to successfully navigate it in complete darkness moved to secure the more vital areas of the office as per standard protocol. While doing so, nobody had bothered to take the time to pause and grab the Uzumaki child who inadvertantly knocked over a small filing cabinet on his way out the door.

When the light returned as suddenly as it had left, Itachi had nearly been blinded, and it took him a few seconds to re-adjust. A few seconds that increased Naruto's heat-start from seven seconds to twelve as the boy who was still blinking at the brightness of the day made his way out of the office and began searching the corridors for the boy. In that amount of time, Naruto had managed to make it out of the building that he'd been carried into and out of so many times that he practically knew the layout. And, in the amount of time it had taken Itachi to search the building and realize that Naruto wasn't inside, Naruto had wandered out of the Administrative/Academy district entirely and had found an old drunk sleeping in an alley.

Poking that drunk awake was probably one of the safest things Naruto had done that day. Everyone in the village knew who Naruto was, and they all knew full well not to touch him unless they had legitimate business doing so or even so much as make a threatening gesture in the direction of the boy. So, when the old drunk had opened his eyes and found himself face to face with a certain toddler, he did the only safe thing that could be done in that situation which was to keep very very still and pray that Naruto got bored and went away. He'd heard the rumor about what had happened to the guy who'd made the mistake of slapping the Kyuubi brat the year before, and he didn't want anything like that happening to him. Even though he hadn't used them for more than a year or so, he liked his twig and berries right where they were thank you very much.

After what seemed like an eternity but was only fifteen minutes - which spoke well for young Itachi's tracking abilities - something that the old drunk could scream at, throw bottles at, and possibly even kick turned up.

As Itachi dodged the bottles that had been surprisingly skillfully thrown by the screaming drunk who also happened to have been a retired ninja as was often the case in Konoha, Naruto ran out of the alley and away from his new plaything that had gone being from fun to scary in under two seconds flat. By the time a couple of his cousins had shown up to haul the old bastard into the station where he'd receive a thorough working over for what he'd said and done to the Clan Head's son, Naruto was long gone, and Itachi was stuck hunting him down once more.

By the time Itachi had finished giving his statement which was as terse and to the point as he could make it to a third cousin who'd halted him less than two seconds after he'd resumed his search for the wayward Uzumaki child, Naruto who had had enough adventure for the time being had made his way to the communal drying lines that served several of the local apartment complexes. The communal drying lines were one of those unofficial official features of Konoha that everyone knew about and everyone who didn't need to use them turned a blind eye to since they technically weren't supposed to exist. The location of the communal drying lines on which hundreds of the village residents who either couldn't afford to use a dryer or simply didn't want to use one and didn't have the space to hang-dry everything where they lived dried their laundry was officially marked down as a training ground despite the fact that nobody ever used it as such and hadn't done so for decades.

On a sunny day like that one, there were usually dozens of baskets full of clothes in which a small toddler could settle down for a nap completely unnoticed by the owner of said basket until said owner got home and noticed an unpleasant surprise mixed in with their laundry. Either by a stroke of good or bad luck - nobody could agree on which it was as it was good luck for Naruto and everyone whose basket it wasn't - the basket in which Naruto had settled down for his afternoon nap had been filled with freshly dried green spandex unitards. Being used to carrying a great deal more weight, the owner of said basket didn't notice the slight weight increase as he tossed the basket high into the air, flipped onto his hands, and neatly caught the basket on his feet. Being used to ignoring the laundry basket's owner for the sake of the preservation of their sanity, none of the villagers noticed the extra item that slumbered peacefully in Maito Gai's laundry basket.

Nobody except Itachi that was...


End file.
